Turn the Page
by Summoner Luna
Summary: It's been ten years since Irvine has seen the people he once saved the world with. And now, after a stop at an ancient gas station in the middle of the night, he's left wondering if he's ever going to see them again. [IrvinexSelphie, liminal spaces, and the home you can't return to. [For The Successor Challenge 2017]
1. Chapter 1

In the darkness of three am, the white lines on the General Francis "Fury" Caraway Memorial Highway blurred into each other. They were a pulse, a dull rhythm underneath the low music playing, leading him into the dots of red and white of cars far in the distance. Irvine Kinneas felt his eye lids start to droop, hypnotized, and after the second time he started to drift off the road, he reached for the knob on the air conditioner and turned it to high.

"Nnnnggh." Beside him, Selphie shifted, and tugged his sweatshirt tighter around her shoulders in her sleep. He felt the urge to smile, although it was quickly tempered by the sucker punch feeling in his gut that had moved in as soon as she called him a week ago and asked if he still lived in DC, and if he did, would he mind giving her a ride.

 _Ten years._

It was an age, and it was a moment.

"'S cold," Selphie muttered, and pulled her legs closer to her in the seat, and he heard her move again, saw the sickly green glow of the stereo face reflected in her eyes. "Where are we?"

"We just crossed into Monterosa time. You were out for almost an hour."

 _When's the last time you slept, anyway?_ he wanted to ask, but it wasn't not his place to. Not anymore.

"Guess I needed it. Are you still okay driving? I can, you know."

"I'm good," he lied. "I know you don't like driving at night—"

"—Didn't."

"What?"

"I _didn't_ like driving at night. I've got a few years of practice in since the last time you and I went on a road trip together."

He chose not to respond, save for a soft, "I'm sorry," several minutes after her words stopped hanging in the air, although he couldn't say what he was apologizing for. Nothing. Or everything. He may have been the one to leave, but it's not like any of them weren't to blame.

"Is there anywhere to stop soon? I'm hungry, and really need a bathroom."

"I've been looking. The next town is still almost fifty miles away, but we may get lucky." _And even luckier if any place we find is open._

"You'd think there would be more here now. It's not like people don't drive this highway all the time now."

"'Guess there's just not enough people who live out here to bother putting anything between the towns."

She leaned back in her seat again, and the pit in his stomach returned. How was it, he wondered, that this was the same person he could spend days with doing absolutely nothing, and now they were reduced to awkward small talk about rural development?

"Look." Around the next curve they took a blue sign flashed their headlights back at them, a neon sign jutting up above the trees a mile or so behind it, red blinking numbers indicating the cost of fuel.

"Oh thank goodness," she said, and he sped up, the song on the radio beating just out of sync with the pulse of the lines rushing beneath them. Five minutes later, he pulled up to an ancient gas pump and frowned at it.

"I know I don't remember this place being here, but these pumps are older than we are."

Selphie kept her head turned away, looking at the small store attached to the gas pumps, and pointed to the side of the building. "Looks like the bathrooms are out there." She opened the car door and got out without another word, and he watched her disappear into the shadows on the edge of the bright fluorescent glow of the overhang.

He wanted to call out of her, to tell her not to go back there alone, but shook his head, and opened his car door instead. She could take care of herself. She always could, and he always let her. So why did the sight of her walking back there fill him such such a sense of dread?

 _Because this place is freaky,_ he told himself. The pumps, the fading paint on the building, and the bathrooms around the outside of the building—those weren't new designs. Definitely not within the last decade, and he'd be surprised if they were newer than half a century. Pre-war, he thought. Pre- _Adel._

In front of him, the analogue numbers crept up on the gas pump, and Irvine fought a growing fear, ignoring the hairs that stood up on the back of his neck.

He finished pumping and walked inside, and was greeted by the same withered old woman in a denim button-up shirt and straw hat that worked at every gas station in central Galbadia. Irvine tipped his hat at her and walked towards dusty shelves full of food with labels so old they might as well be vintage. He grabbed two candy bars and a bag of salted peanuts, and walked back to the counter, his eyes trained on the parking lot, waiting for Selphie to return.

"You mus' not be plannin' on stoppin' anywhere for th' night, if you're here at this hour."

"Naw," Irvine replied, dredging up an accent he lost when he was he was still mostly a boy. He opened his wallet and thumbed through the few bills inside with feigned indifference. "Though I do seem to recall there bein' a half-decent motel a few miles off the highway. Or is that somewhere else I'm thinkin' of?"

"You're thinkin' of the cross into Eastern, unless it's been a _long_ time since you been here. And you don't look that old, young man."

"I thank you for that, ma'am, but I'm surely older than you. I just coulda sworn there weren't nothing off of that stretch of highway, is all. But you're right, it's been a few years since I' been out this way."

She raised a disapproving eyebrow at him from under her hat and Irvine gave her a wink she promptly ignored. "You best be gettin' _back_ on your way, son. The way you're eying that door you look like you're expectin' trouble."

"Just waitin' on my lady friend. She went around back a few minutes ago."

"Not without a key, she didn't." The clerk reached behind the counter and produced something just a little smaller than a baseball bat, with a hole drilled through one end and a key tied to it. "This's the only key we got to those doors, and ain't nobody out here stupid enough to keep 'em unlocked. Especially after dark. If your friend went around this building, you might want to go check on her. Unless she got reason to want to be rid of you?"

"No ma'am. And thank you."

Irvine dropped both the accent and flirtatious tone at the woman's implication, and walked through the door, his change and his purchases forgotten to the worry he could not longer push aside.

"Selph?"

No response. Not even an echo.

"Shit," he hissed, and half jogged back to the car and grabbed the sidearm he kept stowed under the passenger seat, along with a flashlight, and a flare, just in case.

Behind him, he heard a woman laughing. Two women, actually, and if one of them sounded like Selphie, the other definitely sounded like—

 _…Rinoa?_

But that was impossible.

"Come on, Selph. This ain't funny."

This time he saw movement, heading towards the side of the building, and he snapped his hands together, flashlight clasped tightly against the gun. He raised his arms, but the beam shone only onto a few overgrown bushes, and a phone booth, empty of even the phone.

He started towards the side of the building, unsure if he was more angry or more afraid, but froze just before his feet moved out of the light, overtaken by a sense of deja vu so strong he doubled over with nausea.

The laughter again. Followed by the same movement. Always on the edge of his vision, always of people he'd said goodbye to so long ago he'd nearly forgotten what their voices even sounded like. He took a few deep breaths, his knuckles white against his gun, and when he felt composed enough to stand up again he did so, slowly, and turned around—

"Don't go back there, Irvy. Just…just get in the car. Now."

—And found himself looking at Selphie, leaning out of the window of a convertible they rented the summer after the war, looking every bit as terrified as he felt.


	2. Chapter 2

"Selphie, what in the—"

"I have no idea, but we need to go. Now."

Irvine looked behind him, the shadows of the dumpster and broken parking barriers taking shape as his vision adjusted to the darkness, and then back to car. The car, which was now his again, and to a Selphie, who was older and road-weary, instead of the young, fit SeeD from seconds before.

"Selphie what the _fuck—"_

 _"Get in the car—"_

They stared at each other across the narrow pavement, their voices overlapping and then silenced by the loud buzzing of the fluorescent lights. They both looked up, and the lights dipped and brightened in intensity, and with each shift Irvine could swear he saw a change in the building itself. Prices on the signs advertising cigarettes blurred, the numbers shifting from something Irvine had never even seen in his lifetime, to what he was used to in the corner market he passed every day in DC. Faint lights shone from behind the analogue counters on the gas pumps, giving them a dull orange glow. Even the paint on the car itself changed from silver to blue and back, or so it appeared.

 _It's the lights_ , he told himself. _It's the road._ It was hours without sleep, and it was the stress of what awaited them—

"Please," Selphie whispered, and Irvine finally complied. He slid into the driver's seat and slammed the door shut, and Selphie hit the lock button almost before it closed. "Just drive, okay?"

He gave a slight glance to the gas station store again. To the shadows beside the building where Selphie _should_ have been. To the woman inside, who didn't look up when he started to reverse, despite the fact that he still had purchases sitting on the counter. He shifted the car back into gear— _his_ car, with music on the stereo that was only released last year, and the same empty to-go cups they carried with them after they stopped for dinner—and it wasn't until they were back on the highway that he exhaled, and turned to Selphie, waiting for her to do the same.

"That was…"

"I've been here before."

"What?"

"A couple years after you left. Rinoa was struggling, right after her dad died, and Squall was having trouble getting any time away from work, and I was worried about her. He was worried about—he was worried too. So we took a road trip. They'd just decided to name the highway after him, and I thought it might help give her closure. Or something. So I flew into Deling, where she was staying in that horrible mansion all by herself surrounded by nothing but memories of her dead parents, and she was…well, Squall was right to worry. So we started driving and we ended up stopping at that same place, and thought we'd found this oasis because there was even less on the highway then than there is right now.

She spoke quietly, and he was taken aback that she was sharing so much when up until now she'd been reluctant to talk to him much at all, but he glanced beside him anyway. It was hard to make out in the darkness but it looked like she was knitting her hands together, and he smiled at how familiar it was, just being around her again.

"I went inside, and she went beside the building to let Angelo do her business, and…someone was waiting, I guess. I don't know if they were waiting for someone to go around there alone, or if it was just a junkie who saw an opportunity. Rinoa couldn't say, afterwards, and if she ever talked about it at all it wasn't to me. I was inside trying to decide if it was worth the risk of eating a gas station hot dog in the middle of the night, and I heard a gunshot, and then felt the air heat up with magic."

"I remember that," Irvine said.

"You do?"

"I still saw the others sometimes, you know. I played some event in Deling a few months after that I guess, and Zell mentioned you two had run into trouble on the road one night. He didn't know much though. Just that local police were called and then SeeD took over and Squall must have shut the whole thing up since that was the last he'd heard."

Selphie said nothing, and Irvine watched the bright white lines race past them. The song on the radio finished, and changed to one he hadn't been able to listen to since he left, and he swallowed against something painful that welled up in his throat. He wanted to reach over to change it, but that would have acknowledged it. Acknowledged them. And as much as he wanted to talk, to truly talk, if Selphie had wanted that...she wouldn't have waited so long to call him.

And the knot in his stomach was still too tight anyway. So instead he sighed, and said, "Sorry that wasn't much of a stop."

She let out a dark laugh. "I think that was more than enough of a stop. Just maybe not the kind we hoped it would be. There will be somewhere else."

"Somewhere a little more populated this time?"

He glanced over again, and saw her smile reflected in the headlights of a passing car. The song ended, followed by something from a movie that came out the year before, and they fell back into the silence of the highway. Only now, he was awake, and she was awake, and the sound of her laughter was left hanging in the air. A thin mask, over all the unanswered questions, and the sense that the strange and unfamiliar was only just beginning.

.

"Selph."

She groaned, and Irvine reached for her, stopping himself before he touched the bare leg past the hem of her shorts, and lay his hand on her shoulder instead.

"Selphie," he said again, and she shifted in her seat so she could face him, and when she opened her eyes, he saw an impossible distance in them, with no way of reading it at all.

" _Fuck_ I have to pee. Tell me we're somewhere that can happen."

She didn't give him a chance to respond, just unbuckled her seatbelt and was out of the car and racing into the diner, while he was still caught in the whirlwind of her presence.

 _This was a mistake,_ he thought, and not for the first time.

He followed her, locking the car behind him, and his first thought on walking through the door was his surprise at the way the few other patrons here were dressed. It was almost Estharian, which was odd enough in and of itself for the middle of rural Galbadia, but it was _old_ Esthar. Esthar before they lowered their shields, before the surge of culture-blending that happened when satellite waves were restored. And they were...young. Not the pre-dawn coffee crowd he was used to, but not the rowdy post-party crowd. If there were even enough people in the Monterosa region to have a party.

A couple of them looked at him suspiciously, but most averted their eyes. It had been years since he was recognized as a hero, and he imagined it was his ripped and faded jeans and long hair, as much as it was the fact that he was not a local that make them gawk. Not the first time his casual appearance had gotten stares, after all, and it wouldn't be the last.

He slid into a booth near the back windows, and waved to Selphie when he saw her emerge from the ladies' room. She was as out of place as he was, khaki shorts only a little longer than the dresses she used to wear, and her old hairstyle replaced by something even shorter, with a violent streak of purple down each side. He watched her look around and make the same observations he had, before taking a seat opposite him.

"We are still in Galbadia, right?" she asked, and pulled a mirror out of her pocket. He watched her pretend to reapply lipstick while she gave the room another sweep, and glared over her shoulder at the waitress watching them from behind the counter.

"I'm beginning to wonder about that myself," he said. "But I'm more wondering if we're still in, well, _now—_ "

"Don't," she said sharply, but sighed, and put the mirror away, and Irvine felt a familiar wave of annoyance flare up. It was always Selphie, who was most determined to forget about time compression, even back then. And it was always something that bothered him.

"Well what are your theories, then? An Estharian costume ball? We're in the middle of nowhere, Selph. At five am. These don't look like people on their way home from a party."

"So after all this time, your first guess any time something weird happens is still time compression?"

"I didn't say that's what I thought it was."

"What did you mean, then?"

"Don't you feel a little displaced?"

She put the mirror away and turned this time to signal to the waitress that they were ready. Irvine watched the woman walk reluctantly in their direction, and almost missed hearing Selphie whisper, "I'm always a little displaced."

They placed their orders, and sat in silence while they waited for their meal.

 _This is it,_ Irvine thought. _This is why we broke up._ This was why he left, and why he'd barely seen or spoken to anyone in years. Why Zell's pleading about how after everything they went through together, they should stay together, never quite worked.

Because he went through something completely different than the rest of them did, and none of them could ever fully see it, save for maybe Rinoa. They met up with strangers and left with friends. He met up with his brothers and sisters, and left with strangers. And the few years he stuck around pretending only made that more and more obvious. SeeD was not him. It was not his life. It never had been, and the deeper into it he saw, the more certain he was that it was never going to be. And it was _too much_ their lives. Even now, he could see it in Selphie's posture. In the way she was aware of everything going on behind her without even having to look, the way she swept every room they'd entered together for exits while he was still making sure he wasn't going to close the door on anyone else trying to enter.

The waitress brought over their food only minutes after they ordered, and Irvine watched Selphie between mouthfuls of runny eggs and lukewarm potatoes.

She was older. Of course she was older, but she carried it in a way he hadn't expected. Selphie aging was such a foreign concept to him. In their youth he supposed he must have imagined she would be light and bubbly forever. And as much as he wanted to believe it was the hours on the road, their bizarre experience at the gas station, and the stress of their dining companions, he knew—she was never truly light and bubbly. She was deadly, just like they all were. Even back then, she took as much pleasure out of processing arson scenes as she did planning a party, and could switch between talking about designing bombs and designing centerpieces in the same breath.

But she looked _older._

What had happened, in the years he was gone?

"What?" Selphie narrowed her eyes at him, and for a moment, she was the Selphie he remembered. Annoyed with him for paying more attention to her that to wherever—or whatever—he should have been paying attention to instead.

 _I've missed you,_ he wanted to say. To ask her what the hell she'd been up to in the years since they last spoke. To ask if she missed him, but he already knew the answer.

Instead he said, "So, why'd you need a ride?"

She screwed her face up in confusion, and he leaned against the cracked vinyl of the booth, and made a show of sweeping his eyes across the room. "Not like we can really talk about much else right now, right? So, why? And why me?"

She looked something close to angry, but only for a moment, before she sighed and said, "I'm surprised it took you this long to ask."

"I was kind of waiting to see if you'd fill me in without me having to."

"That's…so typically you."

"Is that a compliment?"

"Isn't everything a compliment to you?"

"Heh." His lips twitched, and he reached for his coffee. "Not anymore."

She gave him a stare, and he appreciated that she did not try and feign apology. He watched her make another effort at her potatoes before laying her fork down in defeat, and she looked away from the table, out the large window, at the sulfurous light of the street lamps reflecting on the road. "I was worried I'd back out if I didn't have someone forcing me to go."

He paused, once again caught off guard by her honesty, and took a long sip of coffee to try and mask his surprise. She never did like other people seeing weakness on her, much less admitting to it. "So you called me?"

"I wasn't sure I was even going at all, until about five minutes before I spoke to you. Last I'd heard you were in Deling City, and I figured…well, if you still were it was a sign."

"Are you living there now?"

"…Sort of." She shrugged, and he did not press for more details. "Let's go," she said, and pushed her plate towards the center of the table. "Figure out what other weird shit we can get into on this trip."

"Just like old times," he said, and was relieved to see her smile.

They walked to the register at the front of the store, the few patrons who remained still avoiding eye contact, and Selphie stepped in front of him and pulled a couple of cards out of her pocket before he had a chance to protest.

"You're driving," she said. "The least I can do is buy you breakfast."

He nodded and stepped back, and watched the waitress approach, and did not miss her flinch and go white when she caught Selphie's SeeD ID underneath her credit card.

Selphie didn't miss it either. She kept the card prominently displayed throughout their transaction, all the while playing the part of the distracted and weary traveller. She finally spoke while they were waiting for the receipt to print, nodding her head towards Irvine, and said, "Costume party."

He saw the waitress' shoulders relax by a fraction, but she managed a timid smile and said, "From the city?"

Selphie nodded. "Where else?"

"I'd've figured you'd've changed before leaving, if that card's a part of your costume. It _is_ part of your costume, isn't it?"

"What, this?" Selphie held up her ID card and frowned at it, and Irvine looked around them, aware that everyone in the diner was straining to hear their conversation, while still pretending to ignore them. "I found it a few years ago. Keep it on me, for luck."

"Not much lucky about that. 'Specially since it's still got that old logo on it, from way back. Before they executed that guy in charge for helping a—" She darted her eyes around the room, and then said in a hushed whisper, "A _sorceress._ Lionhart, I think his name was? Tsk. Strange good luck charm, if you ask me, but then, we all got something, don't we?"

Selphie took the receipt a little too quickly and signed it, and flashed another smile while she handed it over. "It's served me well enough," she said, and Irvine was nearly to the door before she'd finished turning around. He felt eyes on them their whole way out, and it wasn't until they were back on the highway that either of them could even speak.

"How," he finally stammered, "Did you figure that out?"

"I don't... I don't think I did," she said, and he caught the shakiness in her voice.

"Well you were believable enough."

"It is what I'm trained to do, Irvine. You too, once. You've just been out of the game for a lot longer than I have."

"Yeah but—wait, what do you mean, longer than you have?"

She froze, and he immediately regretted calling her on the slip. "I—"

"Sorry," he said. "So you don't think you figured it out? Because I have a theory. But you aren't going to like it."

"That we're in another timeline right now?"

He nodded. She sounded at once small and frightened, and ready for a fight, and he fought the urge to reach for her hand. "It feels that way. We should have gotten a newspaper, to check the date."

She leaned forward in her seat, and Irvine sped up a little, propelled by her momentum.

"I'm calling Squall."

"You don't think he's…well, he's a little busy, isn't he?"

"Sounds like he might not even be alive, where we are right now."

A world without Squall. A world where he had been _executed._ For helping a sorceress, the waitress had said, and if Irvine could think of one reason that would have led Squall to that end, it was no secret to any of them that would be it. But that was the Squall he knew, in the timeline he was familiar with. The Squall he had spoken to only a couple of days before hand, which meant he couldn't be—

"His number's not in service."

"Try his office."

"He's not going to be at his—"

"I know that. But if he is in fact still alive and still Commander like he's supposed to be, you'll at least get a voicemail confirming it." She looked over, and he flashed her a grin. "Oh don't look so impressed. Like you said, I used to be trained in this stuff."

He saw a hint of a smile cross her face before she turned back to her phone, staring out the windshield as she dialed. "Another disconnected number," she said after a minute, and his stomach sank.

"Try the main line?"

"Already dialing."

But it was dead too. Along with Rinoa's, Quistis', Xu's, and anyone else that might be able to give them an answer. She finally got an answering machine at Ma Dinct's, which told them nothing other than Selphie's phone was working, and Zell's mother hadn't moved.

"So…do we go somewhere?" Irvine asked.

"Where?" Selphie answered. "We're halfway between DC and Timber right now. Anywhere we could go to look for someone in person is out, and it's not like anyone around here is going to give us any answers."

"We could just ask."

Selphie let a beat of silence go by before he heard the weak, annoyed laughter start. "That was a really bad joke, Kinneas."

He shrugged. "What? I didn't say we'd get any answers." He kept his lips pressed into a line and dared another glance in her direction, and she did not look nearly as annoyed as he expected. In fact, he thought, she seemed almost genuinely amused.

"Does your phone have enough signal to look anything up? Just search for Garden on the Mog Network, see what you find."

"Can't. It's such a dead zone out here I barely have enough to make phone calls, much less do anything online."

He sighed. "Of course."

"But… I guess I could try and call a local business. Look—" she pointed at a decrepit billboard, advertising a law agency out of Deling City. "It's probably too early to get an answer, but I'll call now so I have the number—oh, hi, good morning!"

Irvine tightened his hands on the wheel, wishing for the first time he had a newer car that let him hear the other end of the conversation through his speakers.

"A legal emergency? I guess you could say that. My uh…fiancee and I were on our way home from a costume party and some people claiming to be from Balamb Garden came up to us and… Destroyed? Oh yeah, yeah, I remember that. Something to do with the Commander, right? … …. Not under a rock, just busy these days … You're kidding! … …. Lucky for us is right, I guess! But it doesn't change the fact that those people totally—oh okay. Yeah, I'll call that office instead. Thanks for your help."

She brought the phone down slowly from her ear, and folded her hands over it in her lap.

"Balamb Garden," she said quietly, "Was burned to the ground on Esthar's orders. Over ten years ago."

"…Over?"

"Over. After the Commander of SeeD returned from a mission to the Lunar Base with a Sorceress, and refused to surrender her for Sealing. She was taken by force and Sealed anyway. And he was executed shortly thereafter, for treason."

"The Lunar Base though…but not the mission we were a part of. So why would Squall have any reason to go _back_ to space?"

"I don't…Irvine, I don't think he did. I think it _was_ that mission. He failed. _Garden_ failed."

"But if that's the case then that would mean—"

"Ultimecia succeeded. We aren't in another timeline. We're in _Time._ "

Outside, the sky continued to brighten, and the road raced beneath them.

* * *

 _First off-thank you so much to everyone who left reviews on chapter 1! I forgot to leave an author's note on that one, but I got the idea for this initially in early August but was having trouble figuring out how to start it. But we went to visit my mother for the eclipse since was going to be in the path of totality, and if you've ever been to southwestern Virginia, or eastern/central Tennessee, you'll know that whole part of the US is a phenomenal model for the Galbadian continent in general. And our way home got a little messed up so we ended up doing part of the drive overnight, and we passed an exit around 3am that had nothing off of it except an old gas station and that idea I'd had just came right back to me. I've done a lot of driving in rural areas, and have had plenty of experiences with places like that both at night and during the day, and I couldn't be more pleased at how many people felt I captured the atmosphere there accurately. THEY ARE CREEPY._

 _I will send personal review replies once I get this thing finished-it's turning out to be a bit longer than I had planned, and I'm racing the clock now to get it completed by the 31st. So sorry for the long chapter!_


	3. Chapter 3

Out of all the nightmares Irvine had about time compression once they got back, this scenario had never been one of them. He dreamt about the endless white space. He dreamt about his own past; the reality, and twisted versions of it that felt more real than his memories did. He occasionally dreamt about other people's pasts, so tangled up in what they experienced he often woke up crying for someone he'd never even met.

He did not dream about a highway he'd travelled many times before, or that it would feel completely normal, save for everything he knew turned upside down.

They spoke little, once they decided to keep driving. If whatever rip in time they'd slipped into had found them at the gas station, it didn't seem likely they could just slip back out. Not if the past they remembered was any indication, at least. And despite the differences that drove them apart, they were neither one somebody who relied on looking back, to avoid looking ahead. Whatever awaited them in Timber they would find in Timber. And they both knew it wouldn't be so easy as to just find a reset button, over a hundred miles behind them.

And that was why, hours after Selphie's phone calls, Irvine found himself walking out of an old and dirty motel bathroom, a towel wrapped around his waist as he looked at two beds in an empty room. He shook his head and pushed away a pang of regret, and grabbed a pair of clean clothes out of his backpack and began to dress. He heard the door unlock and open as he was fastening his belt, and turned around to Selphie holding up a plastic bag that filled the room with the smell of fried food.

"The receptionist swore that place next door was edible, but it looks like they do about as much business as a liquor store in Winhill so I'm sorry if this ends up being awful."

"It's still early," Irvine shrugged, and picked his shirt off the comforter and pulled it over his head. "Either that, or we'll wish we'd gotten a room with two bathrooms, instead of two beds."

He started to laugh, but let it fade when Selphie did not join in. Instead, she looked around the impossibly small room and frowned, avoiding eye contact. "Unless you want to sit on those beds to eat, we're better off taking this outside. I figured there would at least be a table or something in here."

"Outside is fine," he said, and she walked back through the door, catching it before it closed almost as an afterthought.

They dropped down to the curb, their feet resting on the asphalt in front of the empty parking space beside Irvine's car, and spent a few minutes of silence pulling the food out of the bag, and setting it on the sidewalk between them.

"You have a new scar."

Irvine reached for a napkin, and took far longer than necessary wiping the ends of his fingers before answering. "Yes," he finally said. He opened his mouth to elaborate, but stopped himself. Did he owe her more? Did she even want more, or was she just—

"Rinoa and I used to keep a tally, of which one of you had more scars no one but us knew about."

He nearly choked, and she reached for the drinks still sitting on her other side and handed him his, that unreadable look back in her eyes. "So uh, who won?" he asked, once he'd regained control of his breathing.

"Oh you already know the answer to that. Squall spent far more time in the field than you did, and even after meeting Rinoa he went in to everything like he had a death wish. He still does. She's the only reason he's made it as long as he has."

She looked away from him, to the row of rooms across the parking lot from them, and he looked with her. The evening was still too light to tell which ones were occupied, but judging by the cars in the parking lot, his guess was not many. "So, how many new ones do you have?"

"I never kept a tally on myself."

Her words were clipped, and a police car pulled into the parking lot, stalling their conversation further. He could see a woman's silhouette through the tinted driver's window, and lifted his paper cup in greeting. Irvine noted the crescent moon of Esthar painted onto the door, as well as the new model of car, both things entirely out of place against the ancient roadside motel.

Time compression was a _trip,_ that was for sure. Surreal in a way he couldn't remember in either experience or dream, and it made him dizzy. And yet, he found himself hoping that was all it was that was happening around them.

 _Hoping,_ he thought, with no lack of disgust, _For Time Compression._

But they'd gotten out of it once, after all. It wasn't something that would ever be _familiar,_ but he felt with confidence, they could get out of it again. And it meant the timeline they knew was still happening out there, somewhere. _As long as no one gets lost and resets it all again._

"Well," Irvine said, once the cop had finished her sweep of the parking lot and disappeared back onto the main road. "It was certainly edible. But they have no idea what the 'hot' in 'hot wings' is supposed to mean."

"They could marinate the wings inside a ghost chili and it wouldn't be hot enough for you," Selphie said, rolling her eyes. "I told them as hot as they could make it, and then hotter."

"Oh I know you did. I've just learned to live with disappointment."

The double meaning of his words hit him before they were out of his mouth, and the temporary relief in tension died in the air.

"Yeah," Selphie snapped, and started gathering up their trash. "That makes two of us." He started to help her but she shooed his hands away, and after tossing their bag in a trash can on the corner of the sidewalk, she paused in front of the door. "How's the water pressure?"

"Terrible," Irvine replied.

"Well," she said, a sad smile playing at the edges of her lips. "Then at least there's something about this trip that's predictable."

She turned and walked into the room, and Irvine kept his back to the door, and his eyes closed. When a few minutes had passed he stood up and walked to the edge of the parking lot, and looked across the street at the endless fields of corn bathed in golden light, disappearing into the mountains.

 _This was a mistake._

But which part?

He considered going to the front desk, booking a second room. Separate beds weren't enough. There were too many years between them to fit into the tiny excuse for a room, and they were exhausted. He needed to sleep. Not to lie awake, listening to her breathe from a few feet away, when if he hadn't been so dumb, if she hadn't been so _difficult_ , he could be listening to her breathe while laying in his arms. He needed to sleep, and not lie awake and wonder if that was even what he _wanted_ , or if he was just doubting the last decade of his life because she was the only thing that was familiar on this entire mind fuck of a highway, and it was human nature to want to stay close to someone who knew what it was you were going through.

The police car they'd seen before rolled back into sight and slowed as it passed, and Irvine felt a wave of anxiety flare up, far stronger than the normal feeling of 'what did I do wrong?' he got from the police in Deling City. He stepped closer to the road as the car came to a stop, raising his hands so they were in plain sight until he could tell the officer about the handgun he had tucked into his belt, and froze in place once she rolled down her window.

"You lost, son?" she called.

"N—No ma'am," he said. He focused on his breathing, on keeping it even. On keeping the shakiness out of his voice and his hands, and how relieved he was that Selphie wasn't out here, and how much he wished that she was. "Just appreciatin' the view 'fore I turn in for the night."

She narrowed her eyes, and looked him up and down, eyes moving from his car and back to him, although she never said a word. He wanted to speak, to do anything that would break through the frozen silence that washed over him, but she may as well have taken his voice along with his ability to move. After a few moments—or it could have been a few days—she turned and rolled her window up and started to drive again, breaking the spell that held him in place. He watched her drive away, until her taillights vanished down the highway far too quickly, even for someone familiar with the roads.

 _"You're thinkin' of the cross into Eastern."_

He couldn't remember what time it was when they stopped, or get a feel for how long they'd been there, but Irvine pulled his phone out of his pocket nonetheless. The low battery light blinked in the upper corner, but the time flashed five minutes to eight.

What time was sunset the night before, he wondered? They'd been on the road for a few hours already, and he remembered Selphie remarking on how clear the sky was, but he hadn't thought to check the time.

He saw the officer's face again, and reckoned the time didn't matter. She was the same woman from the gas station, just like she was the same woman from every gas station. She was probably even one of the patrons in the diner, and among the other drivers on the road.

Irvine turned quickly. The fluorescent lights on the overhang in front of the rooms were bright now that the sun was mostly behind the mountains, and their buzz grew louder as he stepped past his car and onto the curb. He heard a few shouts behind him and paused. _It's just another trick of time,_ he told himself. Zell was already in Timber. Squall had told him so the day before. He was already in Timber, and not standing behind him, waving from in front of a room they got once at a place just like this, on a trip so long ago he'd all but forgotten about it.

 _It's just a trick._

He turned anyway. And was not surprised to find the parking lot still mostly deserted, the rooms across the asphalt as empty as they looked before.

 _Idiot._

The lights flickered a couple of times, and Irvine reached for the second room key and slid it into the lock, shutting the door a little too forcefully and locking it behind him. The shower was still running, and he walked to the bathroom and knocked gently, just to let Selphie know she was no longer in the room alone. He double and triple checked the locks on the windows and pulled the curtains as tightly closed as he could, and when Selphie finally emerged, in a pair of standard issue Garden sweatpants and a ribbed tank top, it was to Irvine sitting on the bed with a can of cheap beer they'd picked up earlier in the day, staring at a blank tv screen.

"Here."

He pulled another can out of the bag in the narrow space between the beds, and Selphie looked from it, to him, to the locked door.

"No thanks," she said.

"She's a Sorceress."

"….what?"

"That cop, that drove past us earlier? She drove past again while I was still out there, and it's the same woman we saw this morning. It's the same woman I _always_ see out in these parts. And I always figured, rural places like this, it's easy to start to imagine everyone looking the same, since you go so long without seeing anyone. But this wasn't just someone who looked like someone else. It's the same woman."

"Irvine…." Selphie looked through the peephole on the door, and peered into the parking lot through the edge of the cheap and dingy curtains. " _What?"_

"I don't think we're actually stuck in time after all. I think we're just in…in her version of it. Or in someone's version of it that she's created."

"Her, the gas station attendant-slash-cop-slash-sorceress?"

"If I'm right—and I think I am. But this morning when I was trying to find out how long that gas station had been there, she mentioned how I must've been thinking about the one right before the cross into Eastern. And I think that's where we are, right now. I don't know if she controls this area or what, but…when I started back into the room, I got the same feeling of being in two places at once I got back at that gas station. And I know that woman driving that police car recognized me."

"So you think she's just manipulated time on this stretch of highway for what, kicks?"

"Or maybe she had something personal to gain from letting things happen the way they did. Maybe she suffered, because of us stoppin' things. Think about Garden, Selph. Remember in this reality Garden doesn't exist. We—you— _they_ —are responsible for as much bad as good. Could be…it's just easier for her to exist in a world without 'em."

Selphie looked hard at the unopened can of beer still sitting beside him on the bed, and turned instead back to the sink, and began fiddling with something wrapped in plastic. After a minute the room smelled like cheap coffee, and she carried a cup with her and took a seat on the bed closest to the bathroom.

"How come we've never heard anything about her?" she asked. "If you're right. And I don't disbelieve you. But with all the SeeD missions that come through this part of the world, with _Squall_ travelling through here, why is it no one else has experienced this?"

"I…" Irvine took another sip of beer, and grimaced at how bad it was. "I can't answer that. I just know what I saw. Maybe she knew who I was right off this morning. Maybe we came through at just the right time. Maybe she just chooses not to mess with Squall knowing who— _what_ —he is."

"And the people who live here?"

"It's the only theory I've got."

"Hmm."

They said nothing, and the silence of the room pressed in. When Irvine finished his beer he got up to brush his teeth, and they tried not to bump into each other, in the narrow pathways between bed and dresser and wall, biting back commentary on each other's new patterns, and ignoring all the memories that were better off ignored.

.

The screaming started well after dark. A raw, inhuman sound, now right outside their window, now in the distance, as if it came from behind the mountains. Irvine knew the sound. He'd heard it, when they fought their way through an endless succession of witches, before time spit them out on the ruins of their childhood home. He lay with his eyes open to the total darkness of their room, torn between relief that he'd been out of this world as long as he had, and guilt. For Garden. For walking out on one of his closest friends because of his own heartache, when she had the same pain as the woman who wailed through the trees outside.

When it stopped, the silence in the room threatened to overwhelm. Irvine could hear Selphie breathing only a few feet away from him, but if she was awake—and how could she have slept through that—she said nothing.

"Car accident," he finally said to the darkness. She didn't reply, but he heard her shift under the covers. "I wasn't driving. I wasn't even in it. Probably…three and a half, four years ago. I was busking down in the shopping district a few evenings before the longest night, and a car rear ended another one about twenty yards from where I was playing. It was a hard hit, and knocked the first car forward some, and when the driver got out I heard kids crying inside, so I snapped my case shut and went over to see if I could help. I stayed until the ambulance left, and while I was standing there talking to one of the police officers, it had started to snow. Next thing we know another car lost control and careened into the police car, knocking it into both of us. The officer got to spend Solstice at home with his family with a broken foot, and I had my spleen removed. That's the scar. Nothing exciting. Just a boring surgical scar, from being a good samaritan."

The room remained silent, and Irvine almost wondered if she wasn't asleep after all. And then—

"I had an affair. With uh. With Laguna."

"Laguna _Loire_ —"

"After you left. You said…when you left, you said I was always going to want more. That you were ready to settle, and didn't think I would ever be content with that. And I don't know if you were right, or if I was just more upset by you leaving than I wanted anyone to believe, but after a year or so I went to Esthar, to work on security development. And…well, you knew about that silly puppy crush I used to have on him. At first we would just get together and have lunch on occasion, but then that turned into often, and then it turned into dinner and then—well, you probably don't want to know the rest.

"But he's….a lot older than me, for one, and he's Squall's father, and he's the _President of Esthar,_ and he had to end it. I knew he would eventually, and he did it as gently and respectfully as I think was possible, given the circumstances. But it still hurt. And I…made some pretty bad decisions after that. Substance-wise. At first I just wanted something to keep my senses sharp, since I was working so much I wasn't really sleeping. But that turned into something to heighten them, and then to make my senses disappear entirely, and you know what that slope is like. Fortunately—or unfortunately I guess, but I know it was for the best—my first time, I had a bad needle. I got some kind of infection, and was hospitalized, and was out for awhile. I died twice, and when they finally got me back, I don't think I could even say my name."

Irvine thought of all the things he could say, all the questions he wanted to ask, but he didn't trust himself not to get in the way. To let his own guilt, pride, everything show in his response. So he asked the first thing that came into his head that he felt he could, and still be somewhat neutral. "Is that why you left SeeD?"

"I didn't leave…so much as was told I was leaving. I think Dr. K. pulled some strings, made it look like things started because someone laced me, rather than my own choices. But I've been out for almost two years now, and I haven't seen anyone but Quistis since then. Which is why I didn't think I'd be able to make it all the way to Timber by myself. I'd have not gotten on a flight, or missed my train, or whatever."

"So," he said. "I guess that makes two of us."

He heard her shift, and could picture the Look she was giving him, whether he could see it or not. "Your battle scar story is almost dying while trying to help frightened children. Mine is narrowing avoiding a massive political sex scandal and falling into a spiral of drugs. _How_ does that make two of us, Irvine?"

"Two of us seeing everyone again for the first time. You're clean now, aren't you?"

"I have been for thirteen months."

"Then there's no shame."

Her only response was another shifting of fabric, and then more silence. Irvine kept waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness of the room, but the blackout curtain on the window was absolute—either that, or the lights, stars, the moon herself had all gone out, all light sucked into one woman's version of Time. A version where Squall Leonhart was dead, where Garden did not exist, and presumably, somewhere in Esthar, one of the kindest people Irvine had ever met was sealed away so she couldn't cause any harm.

What harm, he wondered, could she cause? He knew it was something that weighed on her, weighed on Squall. Something they never spoke about, something the rest of their fractured group actively avoided mentioning, because no one was willing to admit to the reality that there was a _lot_ that Rinoa could do. Just like there was a lot that Matron was able to do.

Irvine wondered about what it was the Monterosa Sorceress was trying to avoid. Why it was necessary to change that specific moment in time, and what benefit it might have to her. She seemed, if not happy, at least content, with this stretch of land, so knowing Rinoa was out there should not have been a point of competition. And there were a dozen others anyway, if Rinoa was to believed, hiding in plain sight, so they didn't have to face the discrimination hurled at anyone with the blood of Hyne in their veins.

So Garden, he decided. Just as he'd told Selphie. Maybe somewhere in the real world _(theirs was the real one, right?)_ she suffered at the hands of Garden, and that was the easiest point in time to pretend had happened differently, to ensure Garden couldn't come for her. That Xu saw what was happening before any of the rest of them, and helped ensure that Garden's days of being run by a Sorceress' Knight were over. That maybe Laguna wasn't told who Squall was in time to stop things—or even that he was, and so saw Garden as the place that invaded his country, only to execute his son.

Or maybe, she was just lost in time, and they really were just lost in it with her.

It made his head spin, and brought up too many memories he would rather avoid. He rolled over to face Selphie's side of the room, and turned his thoughts to her story instead. He tried to picture her, where she must have landed when she was discharged, but it was hard to picture her as anything other than the Selphie she was when he left, and the one she appeared to be now. Selphie, small and powerful, and always in command of herself. It just didn't fit, with a Selphie searching for newer and more desperate ways of forgetting who she was. Or a Selphie flatlining in a hospital somewhere.

 _It's not your fault._

She didn't tell him, to guilt him. And she didn't—wouldn't blame him, anyway. They wanted different things. And it didn't matter that he still didn't have the things he wanted. They knew, even then, that they were on a path towards anger and resentment, the longer they stayed together. He wanted roots. She wanted wings. Staying together wouldn't have prevented what happened.

And besides. His wanting to protect her, to save her, was never anything she wanted. If he had been there—if he had tried, it probably would have only made it worse.

But it didn't stop him from aching to be closer to her now. There was barely a foot's worth of space between the old, uncomfortable motel beds, but it might as well have been an ocean. There was a time they slept together in the half-sized beds in the Garden dorms. Now the open space on the bed beside him was louder than the silence. What would she say, he wondered, if he asked her to join him? Not to hold her, not even to touch her. Just to fill the space they could have occupied in each other's lives. Just so they didn't have to feel so poignantly alone, when they might be stuck in a version of the world where they were the only things the other could find familiar.

She wouldn't say anything. She would stare at him in the darkness. Pretend to be asleep. Or make a comment in an annoyed tone of voice about how he hadn't changed at all.

He dismissed the thought—the thoughts—and concentrated on his breathing, reaching for old tricks on how to fall asleep, when his mind wouldn't shut down.

He dismissed the thought, and sleep eventually did find him.

He dismissed the thought. And because of that, he would never know that had he spoken, he might have been surprised by her answer.

* * *

Irvine opened his eyes to the same complete darkness he'd gone to sleep in, and the distinct feeling that something was different.

He blinked several times, for all the difference it made, and tried to orient himself. He was in a tiny, roadside motel. Selphie was sleeping in the other bed. They were stuck somewhere in Time, although they weren't so sure anymore if they were in ALL of time, or just one woman's version of it. They had said things, the night before. He didn't know what time it was.

And he really, really had to pee.

He pushed the sheets over as quietly as he could and swung his legs towards the edge of the bed, wincing at the soreness in his muscles from an entire day spent on the road. He took a step—and walked directly into a very small body.

"Shit—I'm sorry—"

"I was trying to get out of your way, but I couldn't see—"

They stumbled, over apology and over each other. He tried to move his arms so he wouldn't risk touching her when he couldn't see _where_ he was touching her, and one of Selphie's hands—presumably intended for his forearm, pressed instead against his hip. He inhaled, louder than he meant to, and she froze, their bodies pressed far too close together for his comfort. She was close enough that he could feel her breath against his bare chest, and the urge to close his arms around her, to pull her against him and kiss her, and not _stop_ kissing her was overwhelming.

And she did not move her hand.

"Irvine…"

"Sorry," he mumbled, and stepped to the side, stumbling slightly over the bed as he did, and brought his hands back down trying to feel his way against the furniture towards the back of the room. "Just—need to—sorry."

If she said anything, if she moved to try and follow him, he could not hear her. He closed the bathroom door behind him harder than was necessary, and leaned against it. Still in the dark. Still with the same urge to run back into the room and embrace her. To pull her onto one of the beds with him and fuck her until they forgot about their past, forgot about the hell dimension they had wandered into. Until it was just the two of them, like it should have always been.

He took several deep breaths, trying to talk himself down, telling himself why it wasn't a good idea, despite what his heart—and especially his body—seemed to think. He turned the light on, wincing at the brightness, and as the adrenaline from their encounter wore off, the unsettling feeling he'd woken up with started to return. Between the need to pee, and then Selphie, his concentration had been, well, elsewhere, but now, standing alone, he half expected to open the door and find his room in Deling City, exactly as he'd left it.

Instead, he found a room bathed in sunlight, and Selphie standing beside the window, curtain pushed to the side.

"Well that answers the question about what time it is," he said, and cringed at how stupid he sounded, and turned back to the sink. He splashed cold water onto his face when he was done washing his hands, and took a few steps back towards the beds.

Selphie stood firmly by the window. "Seven-thirty," she said. "But does anything feel…different, to you?"

"So it's not just me."

"What do you think? It feels—"

"Safe," he said, realizing it as he spoke. "It feels safe. Like the morning after a storm, or—"

"After a ceasefire."

"Exactly."

They didn't need to elaborate, to know they were thinking the same thing.

"I think we should go," she said. "Now."

He responded by walking back to his bed and picking up his shirt, and they were packed and ready in minutes.

Outside, Irvine half expected to see the Sorceress-Cop waiting for them, but the parking lot had the same small scattering of cars it had the night before, and he saw a door open across the way, and a man in sweatpants gave a brief wave before picking a newspaper off the ground and disappearing back into his room. Irvine watched the door until it was fully shut, and then shook his head, and unlocked the car.

It did feel normal. It felt so normal it was almost _more_ creepy by comparison. He tossed his bag into the trunk and waited for Selphie to do the same. When he started the engine, the radio picked up in the same spot on the same old power ballad they'd been listening to when they parked the night before.

"I can't believe you still listen to this stuff," Selphie remarked, and Irvine glanced at her, his arm resting on the headrest behind her as he reversed.

"I still sing along, too," he said. "Wanna hear?"

"I think I'm good."

They exchanged a smile, and as Irvine turned out of the parking lot, the feeling that they were leaving something behind grew. Minutes later he merged back onto the highway, and not two miles down the road they passed a sign announcing the change into Eastern Monterosa time.

"Looks like you were right—" Selphie started to say, and was cut off by both of their phones buzzing and chiming as message after message came through. Selphie picked up her phone and gaped at it."It's Rino—it's everyone. Two messages from Rin, six from Zell, three from Quistis and even one from Squall. And that's just on my phone. All from the same numbers we tried calling last night. From _their_ numbers—oh! Rinoa sent pictures, the baby's here, we missed it. Or she has been here, she came at 9:21am Timber time. They named her Noelle."

Irvine frowned. "So that would have been what, 7:21 our time?"

"I think so? Why?"

"Didn't you say it was seven-thirty, when we…when you opened the shades this morning? That was probably only ten minutes or so after I woke up."

"Yeah, but I'd been up for longer. I think it's a coincidence."

But she didn't sound convincing.

Regardless, Irvine was as eager to read anything into that timing, as he was to go back to anywhere they'd been the night before, and he wanted to be happy for his friends. Jealous, but happy. He'd bring it up to them. Eventually. Someday. Maybe. But until then… "You said they sent pictures?"

"Let me know when you can look for a second, this baby has Squall's scowl, and it's _hilarious_."

She put her phone down and reached for his, flipping through his messages like it was the most familiar thing in the world, and Irvine spared looks at the pictures as he could, marveling at how _Selphie_ she seemed, for someone who wasn't sure she even wanted to go see her friends again in the first place.

It wasn't until their first stop, hours later, when they were back on the highway, that they brought up the night before.

"I think you must have been right," Selphie said, around a mouthful of flat, greasy hamburger. "But everything seems normal now. What are your theories on that?"

Irvine drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, trying to figure out how to answer the question he'd been asking himself all morning. "I think," he said, "if I am right, that things _are_ normal now. That's her…where she lives. Where she commands, or whatever."

"But we've never heard anything before about a Sorceress being able to control specific areas."

"Maybe she's like Ellone."

"Hmm." Selphie took a sip of her tea, and they both thought of what the implications of that could be. If Ellone could send one person back in time, could someone with powers similar to hers send an entire region to a different point in time? To one that may or may not even exist? "I still just keep getting stuck on why someone would want to do that. What she did. Whatever happened that she wanted to change…it's just an odd way of going about it."

Irvine shrugged. "Garden exists—or at one point existed—to kill the Sorceress."

"So why kill the one person who's most likely to make sure that doesn't happen?"

"I don't know, Selph. But it's not—it's not our reality. Whatever she wants, she's back there. Look—" he pointed at a police car driving past, the Galbadian seal on the door beside the words declaring it from the Monterosa PD. "No sign of Esthar. Everyone where we stopped for lunch looked like they're native to these parts. And our friends are alive. Squall, is alive. And now he's a dad."

"That seems like it should be another timeline in and of itself," Selphie said with a laugh.

"People change."

"Yeah…" she said, her voice suddenly quiet. "They do."

She reached forward and turned the music up, and for the next several hours they spoke little, other than comments on the songs, on the scenery, and occasionally on memories from their first mission together. They stopped for coffee about half an hour away from Timber, and Irvine finally couldn't take any more of ignoring the obvious.

"So how were you planning on getting back?"

"What?"

"To Deling City. I doubt you're planning to stay in Timber. But you only asked me for a ride down here."

"Oh."

She held her coffee with both hands, bringing it up to her lips and resting it there, and lowering it back to her lap. "Honestly I hadn't thought that far ahead yet. I needed to get here. I needed to know I could do this much, before worrying about what came later."

"Are you okay staying at least a few days?"

"…Do I have to answer that right now? I'm not sure I'm even going to be able to stay a few hours."

"No," he said, and his hand was halfway to hers before he caught himself, and he rested it on the gear shift instead. "But I'm driving back on Wednesday. Got a gig Friday night and I need to be home with at least enough time to shower, but I figured I'd stay as long as I could and help out. Give Squall someone to have an existential crisis to if he needs it. Or save him from Quistis trying to pull one out of him if he doesn't."

Selphie let out a laugh so hard and so sudden it sprayed a small amount of coffee onto the dashboard. She managed an apology, and after she'd fished a napkin out of the glove compartment and wiped up the mess, she asked, "So, was that supposed to be you offering me a ride?"

"Well I'm heading in that direction, after all." He gave her a sly grin, and she took one hand off her coffee cup long enough to give his head a playful push so he was looking away from her and back to the road. She let her hand fall to the edge of her seat, close enough to his that he swore he could feel the heat coming off of her skin.

"So you don't…you don't care?" she asked. "About everything I told you?"

"I…of course I care, Selphie. I never _stopped_ caring. And you were…hurting. All this time, you were hurting, and I was thousands of miles away, completely oblivious. I couldn't _not_ care about do I…judge you? Resent you? Of course not."

"Even for the Laguna part?"

He bit back a laugh. "Well, you were right. You did always have a crush on him."

"I should have left it that way."

"Does Squall know?"

"Oh Hyne, no."

Irvine laughed out loud this time, and to his relief, Selphie smiled. "Well your secret is safe with me."

"I know," she said. "They always have been."

They drove under a road sign announcing their exit, and Irvine took a breath. It was almost over. Whatever bubble they'd created for themselves, first with their drive into a lost pocket of time, their near-encounter this morning, and finally the companionable silence of the rest of their drive—it was almost over. They were about to go back to being exes. Ex-lovers. Ex-friends. Ex-people who used to know everything about each other.

Unless…

"So, Wednesday?" he asked.

"If I can make it through the next few days," she said, "Wednesday sounds perfect. But only if you promise to get gas before the sun goes down."

"Then you've got a deal."

He dropped his hand to hers to shake on it, and didn't let go.

He wasn't sure if he ever would again.

* * *

 _When I started writing this, I told myself I was crazy, and the project was far too large to try and complete in a week, given my extremely limited amount of writing time. Two days before the end of the challenge, I was nearly complete and feeling very proud of myself for it-and then my toddler knocked a glass of water onto my computer, frying it. Insert headdesk. Fortunately, I didn't lose any of my data. Unfortunately, the repair bill was extremely expensive, and I lost over a week, thus pushing me past the challenge completion date, and past the extended completion date. However, I was always going to finish this, I just needed to get my computer back so I didn't have to rewrite everything from scratch!_

 _Thank you to everyone who has reviewed this! I have been so incredibly flattered by the feedback this story has gotten. I struggle immensely with writing Selphie, and this is the first time I think I have **ever** written Selvine. However, I am **very** familiar with deserted stretches of rural, southern highway, so hopefully that is balancing things out a little bit. _

_I hope this conclusion is satisfactory. Had I planned this as a normal MC fic I may have done more to expand on it, but seeing as I started writing this with only seven days to complete it, I knew the resolution had to come fairly quickly. And while I missed the deadline, I still wanted to stick with the story I had originally written, to maintain consistent pacing with the first two chapters._

 _Finally, this is not related to anything else I've written, per the challenge rules. Noelle has kind of become the nom de facto for any Leonhart-Heartilly child I write, and I will probably continue to use that name until I publish a novel using it. And probably after that, too. Any other similarities are just because some things have become such a permanent part of my headcanon that they exist for me as much as the game canon does._

 _Thanks again for reading this! I can't wait to hear what everyone thinks, and I especially can't wait to catch up on reading the other entries in this year's challenge now that I finally have this behind me!_


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